German village generates 321 percent more renewable energy than it needs, earns millions selling it back to national power grid

(NaturalNews) Developing a renewable energy system that creates energy independence and even a considerable new source of revenue is not some sort of sci-fi pipe dream. BioCycle reports that the German village of Wildpoldsried, population 2,600, has had such incredible success in building its renewable energy system. Wildpoldsried generates 321 percent more renewable energy than it uses, and it now sells the excess back to the national power grid for roughly $5.7 million in additional revenue every single year.

By utilizing a unique combination of solar panels, "biogas" generators, natural wastewater treatment plants, and wind turbines, Wildpoldsried has effectively eliminated its need to be attached to a centralized power grid, and created a thriving renewable energy sector in the town that is self-sustaining and abundantly beneficial for the local economy, the environment, and the public.

Possessing admirable vision for the town and strong motivation to see the project as a whole succeed, Mayor Arno Zengerie has led the way for many years in making Wildpoldsried's energy independence efforts a success. As far back as 1997, the village has been investing in building and promoting new industries, maintaining a strong local economy, generating new forms of revenue, and ultimately staying out of debt. And the best way it saw fit to accomplish much of this was through the implementation of self-sustaining, renewable energy technologies.

Not only did Wildpoldsried successfully reduce the amount of time expected to generate the necessary funds to build local treasures like a sports hall, theater stage, pub, and retirement home with the revenue generated by its thriving renewable energy sector -- the village has already successfully built nine community buildings, with more on the way -- but it also achieved all this and more without going into debt.

"We often spend a lot of time talking to our visitors about how to motivate the village council (and Mayor) to start thinking differently," said Mayor Zengerle, who now gives talks around the world about the successes of his award-winning village. "We show them a best practices model in motion and many see the benefits immediately. From the tour we give, our guests understand how well things can operate when you have the enthusiasm and conviction of the people.
Learn More at the original post:
http://www.naturalnews.com/034440_renewable_energy_Germany_power_grid.html#ixzz1gzjysxzh

Super-efficient, low-cost inkjet system to revolutionize solar energy technology

(NaturalNews.com) The same technology used in your home or office printer to deliver ink to paper is now being used in a revolutionary new solar technology that eliminates 90 percent of raw material waste, and drastically cuts the costs associated with producing solar cells.

Engineers from Oregon State University (OSU) are well on their way to producing the first ever super-efficient, extremely low-cost solar film made from inkjet technology, which could make solar energy production a whole lot more efficient and cheaper for consumers

Published in the journal Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, the findings explain how CIGS solar devices -- CIGS being short for the copper, indium, gallium and selenium elements that compose them -- drastically reduce waste, significantly improve efficiency, and summarily revolutionize the way solar cells are produced, as well as how they perform.

...The technology is different from typical solar cell production in that it precisely prints the relatively inexpensive chalcopyrite compound, or CIGS, directly on film as thin as one or two microns -- and it does this without losing much energy, or wasting much of the element compound. Traditional solar technology, on the other hand, involves the use of more expensive compounds that are deposited using processes such as vapor phase deposition, which is very inefficient and ends up wasting most of the element compound.

"Some of the materials we want to work with for the most advanced solar cells, such as indium, are relatively expensive," noted Chang. "If that's what you're using, you can't really afford to waste it, and the inkjet approach almost eliminates the waste."

Besides being highly efficient and easy to produce, inkjet technology opens the door for the greatly expanded use of solar systems in building materials like roofing shingles, windows, and other surfaces exposed to regular sunlight -- the possibilities are endless.....

For the full article vist: http://www.naturalnews.com/032856_solar_cells_inkjet_printing.html#ixzz1QtR277II

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This in combination possibly with non-rare-earth metal solar technology and you have dirt cheap solar!

Transparent Photovoltaic Cells Turn Windows Into Solar Panels

(Don't forget to see my last post! I added this one accidentally and I can't get it off, lol)
Written by John Collins Rudolf, on April 20th, 2011, Here: nytimes.com.


A new class of transparent photovoltaic cells has been developed that can turn an ordinary windowpane into a solar panel without impeding the passage of visible light, scientists said Tuesday.
The cells could one day transform skyscrapers into giant solar collectors, said Richard Lunt, one of the researchers on the project.
“We think there’s a lot of potential to be able to integrate these into tall buildings,” Dr. Lunt, a postdoctoral researcher at the M.I.T. Research Laboratory of Electronics, said in an interview.

Mr. Lunt demonstrating the transparency of the new solar cell

Previous attempts at transparent solar cells have either failed to achieve high efficiency or blocked too much light to be used in windows. But the new cells, based on organic molecules similar to dyes and pigments, are tailored to absorb only the near-infrared spectrum and have the potential to transform that light into electricity at relatively high efficiency.
The current efficiency of the prototype cells is only about 2 percent, but some basic modifications, like stacking the cells, could increase efficiency to around 10 percent fairly easily, Dr. Lunt said.
The largest challenge in developing commercial applications for the new solar cells will be longevity. The cells could be packaged in the middle of double-paned windows, which would provide protection from the elements. But the longevity of the cells would still need to approach the life span of the windows themselves, which would not be replaced for decades.
“To make this thing truly useful, you do need to extend the lifetime, and make sure it reaches at least 20 years, or even longer than that,” said Vladimir Bulovic, a professor of electrical engineering at M.I.T. who collaborated on the development of the cells.
Mr. Bulovic said that previous work to extend the life span of organic light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, which share properties with the organic solar cells, indicated that the problem of longevity was not an extraordinarily difficult one.
“It appears at this point that this is an engineering problem,” he said. “I would expect that within a decade those will be solved issues.”

If the cells can be made long-lasting, they could be integrated into windows relatively cheaply, as much of the cost of conventional photovoltaics is not from the solar cell itself, but the materials it is mounted on, like aluminum and glass. Coating existing structures with solar cells would eliminate some of this material cost.
If the transparent cells ultimately prove commercially viable, the power they generate could significantly offset the energy use of large buildings, said Dr. Lunt, who will begin teaching at Michigan State University this fall.
“We’re not saying we could power the whole building, but we are talking about a significant amount of energy, enough for things like lighting and powering everyday electronics,” he said.
The Center for Excitonics, an Energy Frontier Research Center financed by the Department of Energy, provided funds for the research. A paper describing the technology behind the cells will appear in the next issue of the journal Applied Physics Letters.

University of Michigan researchers find a way to make solar power without solar cells, finding could mean cheaper solar technology

Written by Amanda H. Miller HERE, on Apr 20, 2011

Solar electricity has traditionally meant solar cells and solar panels, but researchers at the University of Michigan have discovered a new way to generate power from the sun without using traditional methods.
In finding a new way to capture the sun’s energy, Professor Stephen Rand and doctoral student William Fisher disproved age-old theories about how light behaves. They found a way to create an “optical Battery” capable of using the sun’s magnetic powers to generate power, according to a press release from the university.

“We simply chose to ignore one of the standard assumptions in optics, that the magnetic field of light is too weak to have a notable effect in almost every situation, and see what could happen,” Fisher wrote in an e-mail.
Fisher said that he and Rand did not set out to find a new way of generating solar power, it was the happy byproduct of their research on optical magnetism, he wrote.
Fisher and Rand discovered that when light is traveling through a material that does not conduct electricity, the light field can generate magnetic effects 100 million times greater than scientists previously believed, according to the press release.
“This could lead to a new kind of solar cell without semiconductors and without absorption to produce charge separation,” Rand was quoted in the release.
In order for the rectification process to work, a light must be shone through a material that doesn’t conduct electricity like glass or porcelain and be focused to an intensity of 10 million watts per square centimeter, according to the release.
“The intensity discussed in the press release is beyond what can be achieved with sunlight,” Fisher wrote in his e-mail, “so we would like to find materials in which this threshold is much lower. Preliminary results from other experiments have shown that this may be possible, but many engineering problems remain.”
Looking for new materials and trying to increase the energy output will be on top of the researchers’ lists as the project moves forward. And one day, this new science could be transformed into a new solar power generation system that uses fewer minerals, a simpler construction process and less expensive every-day materials.
“At the moment this does not appear to be a more efficient way to generate solar power,” Fisher wrote, “but the use of simple dielectric materials could reduce the cost compared to current techniques.”

Image courtesy of NextBigFuture.com